


diagram of a play for blood

by portions_forfox



Category: Literary RPF
Genre: Bloodplay, Multi, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 03:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1924548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can’t tell if it’s been difficult this whole time or if you just never really tried that hard before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	diagram of a play for blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [margottenenbaum (artemis_sparks)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=margottenenbaum+%28artemis_sparks%29).



> for **margottenenbaum** , like half of what i write. this is so jumbled and un-tied-together and messy but it’s been a while since i wrote fic and i just had to do this for you, man. and for myself. so here we go.

There is blood on the back of your hands. 

Neal’s racing ahead, footsteps loud and messy, contradictorily nimble in those big brown boots, whooping, shouting, yawping like old Uncle Walt said to do. Taxis are honking and people are looking and the city rages on like the river itself, a force with blurred blond lights and cold black pavement beneath your feet -- this is New York City, nineteen forty-seven, two forty-one in the morning. This, this is it. 

“Hurry up, Jackie-boy!” Neal calls, a flash of the side of his face from up ahead -- hard brow, sharp nose, coiled teeth. “No time for a hold-up with the big boys on our tail!” 

You laugh, laugh like a wolf, a bark from someplace inside of you you don’t understand, and run harder. Manhattan, two forty-two in the morning: you know freedom. You know it now. “Neal, I’ve got -- ”

A gutwrenching turn and Neal’s hand on your wrist. Alleyway, dark, narrow; heavy breathing and brick walls. Your shoulders press together as you scrunch your bodies against the wall, chests heaving and all words abandoned in lightning-quick base understanding. 

The boys from the bar dart past, buzzing with threats and alcohol. Neal laughs, that wolflike spark in his eye. 

“What’s the matter, Jean-Louis?” he breathes, stepping out from the wall. “Couldn’t keep pace with a little Western miscreant?” 

“No,” you answer, “there’s blood on my knuckles,” shaking, a thousand things at once, a thousand stars, a thousand streetlamps to chase, and you hold out your hands to the dark. They’re swimming in front of you, translucently white in the glimmering street lights stark against the night, and you’re high enough off focusing on the ivory white bones to start just a little when Neal grabs them both. 

“I don’t know whose it is,” you confess, and you shouldn’t be smiling but you smile with half-drawn lips because Neal’s eyes are dead-set on yours, wild and dark and mad like the river, like the city. _This_ , now, this is it. 

“Does it matter?” says Neal, not breaking from your gaze, and then he steps into you and lifts your left hand so it’s suspended in the electric space between each of your faces. Grabs you by the wrist and leans his head forward till his tongue is on the back of your hand, till he licks a broad stripe across your knuckles and sucks on the knob at the end of your index finger where the largest dot of blood resides. He turns your hand in his fist and licks the inside of your palm, where spots of red are spattered with the dirt and sweat and beer, all the while staring, staring at you, mouth a solemn _o_ but eyes still flickering on, everything a giant joke. 

He drops your hand and licks his lips, smacking them like Edie after a fancy wine. Then he grins, wide-eyed and rabid.

“Tastes like any old sorry motherfucker to me,” he says.

 

 

There’s the West, and there’s California. There’s Carolyn’s tongue at the base of your neck some night a week or two into Neal’s latest disappearing act, your New York like a black canvas draped outside your apartment window. Afterwards she curls up with a cigarette naked in the sheets and runs a hand through her pretty blonde hair, stares at the ceiling. You sit up, the sore vertebrae in your back curved at the edge of the bed, and go straight to your typewriter again, clacking out the words.

“This has been nice, Neal, hasn’t it, dear,” she says, sweetly, blandly. You know her too well at this point to fall for it.

Your hands pause at the typewriter just long enough to answer: “Sure has,” and you’re back at it again. 

“It’s awful nice to have a friend in a city like New York,” she lilts, fingers in a _v_ around her cigarette. “You’d call us friends, wouldn’t you, Jack?” 

You nod, this time the typing unceased. “I sure would, doll.”

“You know, I’m _always_ apt to do a favor for a friend,” she drawls, innocent and light, and you don’t bother with more paper. Stop. Turn around. Look at her. _If that’s what she thinks this has been, these last few times, then_ \-- “Aren’t you?”

You wish you knew how to play games by telling the truth like Neal does, wish you could look her right in the eyes and say, _What the hell do you want?_ But in all God’s honesty you’ve never been a fighter. You don’t like blood in your mouth or on your hands like she does and Neal does and Allen does too; you’re a writer who lives it once, and quietly. 

“Listen, Jack,” she sighs, sitting up. The sheets fall from her torso and you can see the slope of her clavicle sliding into her breasts, her waist, her belly button, everything about her unabashed. It reminds you of your first time touching her, a dark, lamp-lit motel room years ago out West in San Francisco with your hands buried beneath her blouse and her belly fiery warm, hazy with the drunkenness of whiskey and Neal’s approving eyes on the back of your head, following the path of your hand up her thigh. “I figure if there’s anyone who can find my husband, it’s you, all right?” 

You think for a moment, then nod and push your typewriter aside; Carolyn offers you a cigarette and you take it hungrily.

In any case, it sure was nice of her to flatter you. 

 

 

The first time you see them together shocks you less than you wanted it to, because they’d been flirting all night and there’s no other word for it, really. Hands squeezing knees and thighs and ribs and hot, whispered secrets in each other’s ears all night at the table, a notch up from the last time the three of you were together but nowhere near far outside their usual realm of behavior. Neal and Allen are drunker than you, either that or they’re just Neal and Allen, and they’re yelling at you over the music how some girls got a room in the back and they’ll meet you in just a few, and maybe you’re so drunk you forgot but you find yourself looking for them as though they’d never told you, and that’s when you walk behind the curtains and you see it, you see -- them. It’s only a split second, but it’s Allen’s legs tangled in Neal’s knees and Neal’s teeth against Allen’s neck and the top two buttons of Neal’s shirt undone, his chest heaving and loud breaths falling out, streaks of saliva on his collarbones. Allen looks at you first, and before his eyes go wide like yours, before the gasp of surprise and the rushed attempts at modesty you swear, you _swear_ you see him smirk. 

Then it’s Neal outside the bar and your feet on the curb and his laughing voice, seizing your elbow, shirt still unbuttoned. 

“Neal, let it go, I’m going home.” 

“Aw, come on now, Jackie, don’t be such a dud. It’s hardly two yet, we got miles ahead.” 

You wrench yourself out of his grasp and you can’t tell if it’s been difficult this whole time or if you just never really tried that hard before. “I’ve had enough. I’m going home.” 

“You’ve had enough, is that it?” He crosses his arms but his eyes are amused, laughing as ever, above you. He steps toward you and you step into the street, stumbling off the curb. This is New York City, 1951. The streetlamp flickers overhead. “Green-eyed monster got your goat, Jackie-boy?”

That’s when you snap, the blurriness of the lamps and the cars and your own intoxication slamming into focus until it’s just Neal’s, Neal’s face, your words. You can tell the truth if you want to -- hell, you’re writing a book full of the goddamned truth. You have nothing left to lose; now, _now_ you know freedom. “Hell, Neal. I’ve never been so jealous in my fucking life.” 

Neal blinks, and there’s surprise written in his brow. He steps toward you again, and this time you let him. “Did you think it was gonna be with you?” he asks you, voice low, almost mocking. “If I was ever gonna fool around with that?” 

“Yeah, I did. I really did, Neal.” Neal’s smirking now, toying with you without realizing you can play games too, because _you_ , you know there’s nothing more irresistible to Neal Cassady than somebody wild in love with him. 

His hands tucked inside your beltloop, your fingers in his lapel. Teeth bared in a grin like he’s ready for a fight, your head knocked forward till your noses are pressing, eyes held tight. Palms sliding deeper, sliding lower. Reaching down and out.


End file.
